This civ trait could use more punch. How about this... Every time an expansionist civ builds a settler its city population is reduced by one instead of two. That's much better than just a scout and the ability to build more scouts.

All the other civ traits dwarf expansionist in value. Perhaps the smaller pop reduction is a little too much punch. Maybe half-cost aqueducts and hospitals could be part of the trait. Although this helps growth rather than expansion, at least it would help to alleviate the overall negative opinion of this trait.

Or maybe the scout should have the ability to either retreat from barbarians or move an additional tile if its turn movement ends next to a barbarian. Every time I play as an expansionist civ I lose my scout to a barbarian before he can finish exploring the landscape. It irritates me tremendously. It's no fun if you have to set barbarian activity to sedentary or none every time you play an expansionist civ. The 25 gold you get every time you bust a barb camp is a big help early so I don't like disabling them.

but when an enemy unit is within range of attack, even if the unit is moving 60 squares somewhere, doesnt the unit come under your control and you can tell it to attack or move away? isnt that sorta like retreating? i think thats what happens, it happened to me before.

1 Pop Settlers is too unbalancing. I think I would rather it have cheap granaries, aqueducts, and hospitals (but commercial should get cheap Markets and Banks)

Maybe Expansionist Civs should get +4 to optimal # of cities, and/or reduce the level of corruption due to distance from capital by 25%.

Corruption reduction is for commercial civs, play as the English if you want expansionist with reduced corruption

I think it wouldnt unbalance things too much if expansionist civs got 50% cheaper granaries, aqueducts, and hospitals. I like that idea a lot Louis. Can anyone come up with a good reason why this wouldnt work?

I heard someone at Poly give a reason, I'll post it when I find it again (I stole that idea from someone else at Poly, so I'd better give him credit ;) )

The complaint was that starting with cheap Granaries would be too powerful.

BTW, this can be tested with the editor (accept for commercial civs, IIRC)

By any chance, does Poly delete posts after 2 pages?

I can't find it, so I can't give credit.

I still think it is a great idea, and expansionists won't become super civs (religious civs still get free statue of Liberty and cheap culture, so it might balance out)

Originally posted by casual_moose
but when an enemy unit is within range of attack, even if the unit is moving 60 squares somewhere, doesnt the unit come under your control and you can tell it to attack or move away? isnt that sorta like retreating? i think thats what happens, it happened to me before.

Well, yes, if the unit still has any movement points left, he will stop. The scout moves 2 tiles/turn. If he runs into a barb on that 2nd tile, he is a dead man.

1 Pop Settlers is too unbalancing. I think I would rather it have cheap granaries, aqueducts, and hospitals (but commercial should get cheap Markets and Banks)

Geez, who would ever build the Pyramids if you can get 30-shield granaries? I do like the idea of half-priced aqueducts and/or hospitals, though.

Expansionists isn't that bad, really. Even on smaller maps they can be useful. If you give the scout a defense value, so it can at least defend itself against barbs, that should be a big enough boost for expansionists. And/or give the scout a longer range of vision, so he can see those barbs from 2 tiles away.

I like Bamspeedy's idea. Radar on a scout. However funny it sounds, it would make the unit much better. Afterall, a scout can, theoretically see farther than normal soldiers.

As I mentioned in a similar thread, my "house rules" are that expansionist civs start with 2 settlers instead of a scout. This I use as the UU for the Iroquois.

I don't really disagree with improving the expansionist trait. However, I do see the great advantage that expansionists have over others.

With a scout, you get a better view of the land that you wish to populate. So you can better plan where you want to build your cities to maximize the use of the land and minimize overlapping of squares, and even find the best defensive positions to build cities.

Also if you're as open to sharing technology as the A.I. is, then you can easily have a head start on technology over your rival civs by acquiring the diversity of techs that your neighbors have and trading only the same few techs to them.

So I would say that expansionist civs would just about match up to scientific civs for having a techonologically good head start in the game. I know that A.I. takes good advantage of this civ trait.

I would agree that after this head start and as the years go by, expansionists don't experience any more benefits.

I would suggest that maybe expansionists would have better trade deals against the A.I. because you know the A.I. always rips you for a few percentages higher than you should be paying for.

On anything but an archipelago map, expansionist is one of the best traits, perhaps only worse than industrious, and barely at that. Scouts mean more contacts earlier. More contacts earlier mean cheaper techs and easy brokerage opportunities. When mapmaking comes around, you have the best maps around, gaining a second windfall. The disadvantage that expansionist has is that after the first age there is no more benefit, but if you use the expansionist trait properly in the first age, it doesn't matter. My favorite Civ is by far America. Combine industrious with expansionist and it is easy to become the world power by the end of the first age.

Half-price granaries or 1 pop point per settler would be hugely unbalancing.

The expansionist trait is just fine as it is now. In fact, all existing traits are nicely balanced, except perhaps Industrious being too powerful.

I agree with you, alexman - even the Industrious civs lose an advantage once they hit the modern age and they've already got every tile improved - all they have to do then is clean up pollution. I'm curious to see what advantages the agricultural and seafaring traits will have, though.

I think it's a tossup which is better, Industrious or Expansionistic, for my play style.

Here is my 2 cents for this trait
1) Allow the scout to move 2 squares regardless of terrain
2) Expand cultural borders at 9,90,900,9000 vs. 10,100,1000,10000 culture points.

Originally posted by playshogi
Here is my 2 cents for this trait
1) Allow the scout to move 2 squares regardless of terrain
2) Expand cultural borders at 9,90,900,9000 vs. 10,100,1000,10000 culture points.

fully agree,
and pheraps an increased cultural assimilation rate [sorry I don't know how it works in numbers, someone can tell me?]:confused:

Originally posted by nini1972


fully agree,
and pheraps an increased cultural assimilation rate [sorry I don't know how it works in numbers, someone can tell me?]:confused:

I believe it is determined by the government type in the editor :cool:

The expanding cultural borders earlier seems like a good idea.
Maybe, the Expansionist civs should start with 2 settlers as someone said earlier, or with 1 or 2 extra workers and a lower turn time to build roads (therefore expanding their influence; but if this were true, the Romans might have to be expansionist ("all roads lead to Rome")... Anyway, I think the expansionist civs are good, but you get a better deal with the aztecs compared with expansion (the UU can move 2 squares, has an attack and defence, and they have militaristic to back up the fact that it's a UU warrior. I think the zulu UU can also move 2 squares and it's militaristic and expansionistic. Either make expansionistic more powerful, or change the UUs.

You want to make one of the Power Traits even more powerful??

I think that when people complain about the Expansionist trait they simply don't use it and so fail to see its true value. Sure, if you just play it as "one free 2-move exploration unit" then of course it's weak. But equally weak would be an Industrious civ that only builds a couple of workers.

Expansionist Strategy: You got the Pottery for a reason. Go build that granary and pump out settlers. Your are supposed to be expansionist so go and expand. Look also at the list of buildable units in your cities. One of those units is the Scout. Start pumping them out, too. Go forth and explore that Huge Pangae Map popping those goody huts like crazy and contact the other civs before they can contact each other. Trade the techs you pop. Trade contacts, too. Trade even more. You will hit the Middle Ages in the early BC and have a big empire by then...

Expansionist definitely does not need a boost. More likely it's too powerful as it is.

I think the problem is that Expansionist is very powerful on big maps, and weak on small maps. I play tiny and small maps, and my Expansionist civs tend to only find one or two goody hut before they are all gone. On standard size maps, I tend to get maybe 4-8 free techs, some units, and maybe a city out of them.

If any improvement were to be made, I would be sure that it really only helps for small and tiny maps. Perhaps they could start with an extra settler on these maps.

Giving an extra settler would be horribly overpowering. You would be able to expand twice as fast as the AI. Think about how many cities the Deity AI has when you first meet them...

Originally posted by Slax
I think the problem is that Expansionist is very powerful on big maps, and weak on small maps. I play tiny and small maps, and my Expansionist civs tend to only find one or two goody hut before they are all gone. On standard size maps, I tend to get maybe 4-8 free techs, some units, and maybe a city out of them.
Its weaker on smaller maps for sure, but finding goody huts isn't the only benefit of Expansionist. On a small map, its just as useful as on a large map to know your surrounding terrain when producing your first settler, and its just as useful to get contact with all the other civs before they get contact with each other (although you lose a little since there are less civs) - this alone can net you several techs. And its just as useful to be able to build a granary ASAP (after a scout or two, of course).
And its just as useful to have a few units that can block enemy settlers from getting before you to a good spot. The scouts are especially good at this with 2 movement points and their ability to do it inside the enemy's border.

If any improvement were to be made, I would be sure that it really only helps for small and tiny maps. Perhaps they could start with an extra settler on these maps.
...which would make Expansionist better than any two other traits combined - even on a small archipelago map.

Alright, alright, the extra settler would be too overpowering, but I still believe that Expansionist is too weak for small and tiny maps.

Play an expansionist on a small MP map and you may change your mind. Or better yet, play against an expansionistic player.

Actually, the best idea mentioned thus far would be to just give the scout a LOS of 2 instead of one. That way you could still explore but hopefully miss the barbarian camps easier.

Leave everything else as it is, but do this and it would be better than now so all those early scouts wouldn't stop next to the always unfriendly barb camps.